You're telling me Beyonce is a revolutionary? Thirty years ago, you had those guys who raised their fists at the Olympic games, and they paid 30 years of their lives because of that gesture. And you're telling me a superstar who put one fist in the air is a revolutionary? But that's the superficiality of this time.
Whatever will happen has to be based on long-term policies and strategies of resistance. We had the Occupy Wall Street movement, but when they had to step up and organize in a more institutional way, the whole movement dissolved.
I don't think I ever watched a movie without being totally immersed in the story. But at the same time, I had to keep some distance from it. I had to question what the narrative was trying to tell me or was injecting in my brain.
When I have people trust me with their money, I am obligated to give them a great film. I am not obligated to give them a profit.
We are artists. We are all subjective people; we have a point of view. It doesn't mean we are right.
America has been living on the back of the whole world! If you take how much energy we consume, like, 20 percent of the world's energy is consumed in this country. Where do you think it comes from, and what are the sacrifices of those countries?
That's part of being a real citizen: always questioning your leadership, not only about what it is doing in your own country, but what it is doing elsewhere. Because it is connected.
I consider myself first of all an artist. My work is about my creativity - why I create and not for whom.
Making a film is just layers and layers of work of edits and trial and error.
That's the absurdity of Twitter. You can react without thinking now.
That's what as an artist you always try to do. To try to be a sharper mind than the average person.
I think this whole discussion about what is politically correct - sometimes you have to name the name. You can't hide it. Politeness is good if it's not hiding the truth.
My story with film is kind of different because I started with photography because my father was a photo buff. He had all sort of cameras, and I grew up with that.
I studied economics. I studied industrial engineering. It wasn't until later, when I was around 26, that I really decided to go to film school.
To put it simply, as a black man, I started watching films at the age of six, and I've since seen the bad guys changing race - between the African savages, to the Native Americans, and then the blacks and the Arabs and the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Look at 'Rambo': it's exactly that.
I came back to Haiti after the earthquake not to shoot a film, but to help and be a part of the rebuilding process, like all my fellow compatriots. I didn't come to shoot a film, but I became frustrated when I realized that my help was kind of useless. We all felt lost and helpless. And it's out of that frustration that I decided to shoot a film.
